Editing Elf (section)

==== In ballads ====

Elves have a prominent place in several closely related ballads, which must have originated in the Middle Ages but are first attested in the early modern period.{{sfnp|Taylor|2014|pp=199–251}} Many of these ballads are first attested in [[Karen Brahes Folio]], a Danish manuscript from the 1570s, but they circulated widely in Scandinavia and northern Britain. They sometimes mention elves because they were learned by heart, even though that term had become archaic in everyday usage. They have therefore played a major role in transmitting traditional ideas about elves in post-medieval cultures. Indeed, some of the early modern ballads are still quite widely known, whether through school syllabuses or contemporary folk music. They, therefore, give people an unusual degree of access to ideas of elves from older traditional culture.{{sfnp|Taylor|2014|pp=264–66}}

The ballads are characterised by sexual encounters between everyday people and humanlike beings referred to in at least some variants as elves (the same characters also appear as [[Merman|mermen]], dwarves, and other kinds of supernatural beings). The elves pose a threat to the everyday community by lure people into the elves' world. The most famous example is ''[[Elveskud]]'' and its many variants (paralleled in English as ''[[Clerk Colvill]]''), where a woman from the elf world tries to tempt a young knight to join her in dancing, or to live among the elves; in some versions he refuses, and in some he accepts, but in either case he dies, tragically. As in ''Elveskud'', sometimes the everyday person is a man and the elf a woman, as also in ''[[Elvehøj]]'' (much the same story as ''Elveskud,'' but with a happy ending), ''[[Herr Magnus og Bjærgtrolden]]'', ''[[Herr Tønne af Alsø]]'', ''[[Ungersven och havsfrun|Herr Bøsmer i elvehjem]]'', or the Northern British ''[[Thomas the Rhymer]]''. Sometimes the everyday person is a woman, and the elf is a man, as in the northern British ''[[Tam Lin]]'', ''[[The Elfin Knight]]'', and ''[[Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight]]'', in which the Elf-Knight bears away Isabel to murder her, or the Scandinavian ''[[Harpans kraft]]''. In ''[[The Queen of Elfland's Nourice]]'', a woman is abducted to be a [[wet nurse]] to the elf-queen's baby, but promised that she might return home once the child is weaned.{{sfnp|Taylor|2014|pp=199-251}}